Netanyahu Disappeared from Israel for an Entire 24 Hours and No One Knew

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears, does it make a sound? Similarly, if a prime minister disappears from his country for an entire day and no one notices, where in the hell was he? In most other western countries reporters track the schedule and physical presence of their leaders. They know where they are at any given moment and, if newsworthy, they’re there to report it. Not so in Israel, a country which neither western or democratic. Nor apparently do its reporters know where their PM is at any given moment. I find that exceedingly strange.

Oman’s sultan welcomes Netanyahu

All this by way of introducing the odd story of Bibi Netanyahu’s disappearance from Israel for 24 hours a few days ago. After he’d returned to Israel, he crowed about a coup he’d secured in visiting the sultan of Oman and securing from him a glowing statement that the Israel-Palestine conflict is ripe for resolution. Such a remark from a leading Arab leader is a feather in Bibi’s cap. He’s made much of his strategic inroads in the Arab world via his bromance with the Saudis, who’ve in turn brought along their toadies and allies as new friends of Israel.

In contrast, it’s a betrayal of the Palestinian Authority, which is locked in a deadly dispute with Israel and the U.S. Such normalization by Oman, erodes support for the Palestinian cause in the Arab world. That in turn increases the isolation of the Palestinians and weakens their bargaining position.

Aside from the oddity of not knowing your own prime minister had slipped out of the country, it’s equally odd that no plane spotters noticed that an Israeli private jet had chartered a flight from Tel Aviv to Oman and back. Even more curious is the identity of the owner of the plane. In fact, Israelis have now identified the plane as belonging to an offshore company called Waylawn Ltd. Thanks to the Panama Papers, we know that Waylawn is a shell company concealing some of the wealth of one of Israel’s leading oligarchs, Idan Ofer. Thus, Ofer used his private plane to ferry Netanyahu to Oman right under the noses of Israel’s media.

Israel’s have noted that the flight path of Netanyahu’s plane took it over Saudi Arabia, which does not permit overflights of Israeli aircraft. But where there’s a will, there’s a way: the five-minute landing rule is the fiction developed to work around such a dilemma. An Israeli plane lands in Jordan, returns to the head of the takeoff line, then takes off again having become–presto-changeo, a Jordanian flight.

The Ofer family is no stranger to such skullduggery. In fact, the Mossad has thanked the family personally for permitting its agents to enter Iran via its oil tankers, which illegally were shipping Iranian oil, thus breaking international sanctions. The U.S. government actually blacklisted the Ofer family for violating the oil embargo. In Israel, you can get away with a lot if you help the right people at the right time.

In fact, Iran figures prominently in the case of Oman as well, as the latter has a long history of relations and trade with Iran, to the annoyance of the Saudis. Oman was the site of the earliest talks laying the groundwork for the Iran nuclear deal. So why Bibi was there is quite the mystery. Some Israelis have speculated that it may have something to do with negotiating a sulha between the Saudis and Turkey. But that theory seems too vague to grant too much credence to it.

If we want to see an Israeli with a similar career arc to the Ofers, look at the case of Boris Krasny. He is the invisible man: an Israeli double agent protected by Israeli intelligence for betraying Russia’s highest level Israeli agent, Markus Klingberg. Krasny exploited all of his contacts and called in tremendous favors for his exploits, which helped turn him into the most powerful business consultant in the country. But inside Israel, no one may mention his role as a double agent who betrayed both Klingberg and the KGB as a double agent.

Similarly, in return for special favors like the Oman junket and infiltrating Israeli agents into Iran, the Ofers are given carte blanche to rack up enormous profits and control wide swaths of the economy. In effect, Israel is not a capitalist country. It is a country run by and like the mob, who are its eighteen oligarch families.

@Li Hung So Low: You’d have to be a fool to believe that Oman can make peace between Bibi and anyone, let alone both the Palestinians or Iranians. There will NEVER be peace as long as he rules. And as long as uber nationalists ‘like him rule.

But do bury your head in the sand. That’s where it belongs.

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October 29, 2018 1:50 PM

Potter

I hate to be flippant, but he should completely disappear.

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October 29, 2018 1:49 PM

Strelnikov

“In most other western countries reporters track the schedule and physical presence of their leaders. They know where they are at any given moment and, if newsworthy, they’re there to report it. Not so in Israel, a country which neither western or democratic. Nor apparently do its reporters know where their PM is at any given moment. I find that exceedingly strange.”

If you see Israel as a military with a country and not a country with a military, it makes sense – you aren’t supposed to know where the generals are. Netanyahu leaving for a day to pull a diplomatic stunt and nobody knowing is an inversion of that fake army they built around General Patton as a diversion for D-Day. It also sets the bad precedent (if Israel is militarily defeated in the future) that nobody of field rank will be there to sign the surrender documents – all the brass and all the politicos will have silently fled to Manitoba, Ibiza, and Zurich. Can papers be signed in good faith by a reserve lieutenant from the motor pool, an air force technical sergeant, a navy doctor, and the Tel-Aviv chief of police?

“….In effect, Israel is not a capitalist country. It is a country run by and like the mob, who are its eighteen oligarch families.”

You know you are describing the “14 families” who ran El Salvador’s coffee and sugarcane industries in the 19th and 20th centuries, right? Usually such countries are doomed to being impoverished states exporting monocrops, but Israel was “blessed” by starting out as a very-good social democracy and declined into the neoliberal hell that has befallen most of the world since Reagan-Thatcher.

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October 29, 2018 2:49 PM

Jen

Obama went on a secret visit to Afghanistan. What does that says about American democracy? Absolutely nothing. Special visits call for special measures.

@ Jen: Obama did not visit Afghanistan in order to get the Afghanis to betray Canada or Mexico through a fake peace deal. He went in order to visit U.S. troops.

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October 29, 2018 11:26 PM

Jen

You claim was it was undemocratic for a president/PM to disappear w/o the media knowing about it. It took exactly 2 minutes to find it about Obama.
Anyone can understand sometimes secrecy is necessary. If it was a weekly routine I could understand your concern but visiting a country with no official relations with Israel is not less of a special occasion whether you approve or not.

@ Jen: Don’t ever characterize my views on any subject. You’ll invariably be wrong. I did not “claim” the Bibi’s trip or his disappearance was “undemocratic.” I claimed that Israel was not a democracy because its press either can’t or won’t cover its own national leader, permitting his to disappear for an entire day while he engaged in a major trip which the Israeli public had every right to know about, but didn’t.

Obama’s trip had nothing to do with Bibi’s as I already wrote. Obama traveled in secret in order to avoid a terror attack. Netanyahu traveled in secret in order to avoid placing Oman under pressure or opprobrium from fellow Arabs who might object.

And no secrecy is not “necessary.” It is a poison that afflicts autocratic regimes like Israel and others and denies the people the right to know what leaders are planning and doing. As for ‘weekly routine,’ it is worse than that. It is a daily routine. Secrecy is a plague that afflicts Israel throughout society, but especially in the military, intelligence, media and judiciary.

@ Jen: As I’ve written here many times: do NOT ask a question in the comment thread without reading ALL the linked articles and posts. The link associcated with the term “oligarch” offers a great deal of information about Israel’s oligarch families, who they are, what they control, and how they got it. Study up on the term “oligarch” then study up on the nature and structure of the Israeli economy. It is a clear example of a vulture capital, oligarch model. The Ofers are but one example.

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October 29, 2018 11:25 PM

Jen

Self referencing is a bit odd.
It is even odder when the reference doesn’t even have the word “oligarch” in it.

I made a quick google search and oligarch is mentioned with the Ofers only I need regards to an apartment they bought from an oligarch.

@ Jen: No it isn’t. The posts reference a report which clearly lays out who the 18 oligarch families are and why they are oligarchs. They own 60% of the capital in Israel. I didn’t make that figure up. And you deny they’re oligarchs?

You are done in this thread.

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October 30, 2018 1:08 AM

Chen

Is keeping a leader’s trip abroad secret when the destination may contain extremely hostile elements truly so unprecedented?

@ Chen: Um, no. That’s pure Arabophobia, which is not acceptable here. Oman is ruled by an elderly fellow who is not a terrorist and doesn’t permit terrorists in his country. Nor is his country hostile to Israel. If it was, why would he be meeting Netanyahu. It may be hard to believe that there are such Arabs and Muslims. But shockingly, it IS true.

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November 12, 2018 5:09 PM

Chen

The ruler of Oman may not “permit” terrorists in his country, but the question is whether agents of hostile elements can nevertheless easily access its territory. As to the population itself, I can provide only this anecdote, which is admittedly not strong evidence that the population as a whole is hostile to Israel, but is still more probative of the population’s views than what you have offered (i.e., the country itself isn’t hostile).

@ Chen: So an Omani policeman represents all of the Omani state? Further, did they harm the Israeli? Did they threaten him? No. Were they wondering why an Israeli would come to Oman other than him being a Mossad agent? You bet.

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November 15, 2018 9:18 PM

Chen

As an initial matter, I acknowledged that I provided only anecdotes, which of course have limited probative value.

But to be fair to them, you must acknowledge what they are. First, two Omanis answering a question about what Omanis think of Israel with extreme hostility to Israel, Israelis, or Jews generally. This is of course not a large sample, but consider that these were the only answers given.

In the second example, we have the Omani police interrogating an Israeli journalist who had done nothing wrong for hours and then telling him to tell Israeli journalists not to go there. Would you not say that this represents hostility by official organs of the state?

Well, if I were in charge of the security of an Israeli leader traveling to Oman, I would absolutely proceed on the assumption that the population is potentially hostile. I think any reasonable person with that responsibility would. And, again, there is the issue you do not address, which is whether the territory is easily accessible to agents of hostile elements.

An Omani policeman is just that, a single individual from a single state agency. He doesn’t represent anyone other than himself and whoever sent him. He was not sent by the emir and does not necessarily represent the emir’s views. And in a one-man rule state like Oman, the emir is the ultimate boss. The fact that he invited Netanyahu to visit him trumps what a low level policeman did or said to an Israeli tourist.

Not to mention that this tourist was not really a tourist. He was an Israeli reporter probaby snooping around, even possibly with a hidden camera, trying to dig up a story he could report for Israeli media/TV. I’d be suspicious of such a person myself if I were a police officer.

As for exhibiting hostility to Israel, gee I wonder why an Arab would do that? You Israelis are amazing: you bully, kick and beat the crap out of Arabs for decades and wonder why they don’t welcome you with open arms.

As for what you think about the security or level of danger for an Israeli leader visiting Oman–I could care less.

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November 16, 2018 2:01 PM

Chen

[Comment deleted: I told you not to post in this thread again. You did. You are now moderated. Only comments which respect the comment rules and my requests will be posted.]

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